Stress Measuring Device

A group of Japanese researchers has developed a gadget that can supposedly measure human stress levels:

“Previous research has shown that when you analyze the pulse-rate waveform using chaos theory, you can see whether it is maintaining a certain rhythm, and this relates to how healthy a person is. We have fine tuned that system so that this measurement can serve as a stress index. You may wonder if what we’re measuring is really stress. In this regard, the clearest indicator of stress is the amount of hormones in the blood. Data from such blood analysis has about a 70% correlation with the results of our software. So it’s probably fair to interpret this measurement as an indicator of stress, like a blood test.”

“I think many office workers harm their health by continuing to work while their stress level is high. We think it would be good if people could look after their health by assessing their own stress level.”

“Supposedly” Being the key word here. Stress a vague thing and cannot be measured.

Anonymous

Nintendo supposedly had a similar device in the works, dubbed the ‘Nintendo Vitality Sensor’. In the case of Japanese work environments, I think a drastic change in corporate/management culture would do far more to improve employee satisfaction than some pseudo-scientific ‘chaos theory’-fueled stress detector.